Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Ingrid Caven £4.35
Dennis Cooper, Closer £2.99
Alfred Jarry, Adventures in Pataphysics
£8.09
Saturday, 31 October 2009
biblio
Just bought a few books:
Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Ingrid Caven £4.35
Dennis Cooper, Closer £2.99
Alfred Jarry, Adventures in Pataphysics
£8.09
Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Ingrid Caven £4.35
Dennis Cooper, Closer £2.99
Alfred Jarry, Adventures in Pataphysics
£8.09
Friday, 30 October 2009
call
As each season turns, so a new Yuck 'n Yum deadline rolls around once more. Send any art ephemera etc for consideration to: submissions@yucknyum.com
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
I-BE AREA
On Thursday 12 November Glasgow's Tramway will be screening a film called I-BE AREA by the young US artist Ryan Trecartin. I'm hoping to attend, and here is a sample of the delights in store:
Monday, 26 October 2009
haul
Having got paid last week I bought some bootleg classic Italo vinyl reissue action. Only cheap, mind:
Number One Ensemble - Gipsylon, £9.99
Yellow Power - Yellow Power, £9.99
Number One Ensemble - Gipsylon, £9.99
Yellow Power - Yellow Power, £9.99
Sunday, 25 October 2009
indexus
Another week, another bunch of links saved to my Delicious account:
b3ta.com/questions/fetishes/
The enemies of reason: Hmm... remember this?
Scientists study possible health benefits of LSD and ecstacy | Science ...
k-punk: Adolf Brent
Dark Monarch exhibition Tate St Ives | review | Books | The Guardian
Death Reference Desk
DC's: Alan presents .... Alfred Jarry and Ubu roi
the future that had arrived: j. g. ballard (1930–2009) - artforum.com ...
Guardian 'banned' from Leeds United's Elland Road | David Conn | Sport | guardian.co.uk
Saw: brutality is only skin deep | Film | The Guardian
Saturday, 24 October 2009
Friday, 23 October 2009
Halloween poster competition
The DCA are having a competition to design a poster for their forthcoming Halloween cinema screenings. Here is my video nasty-themed effort:
Thursday, 22 October 2009
Nine Trades in Norway
The bedroom in this film belongs to the super-talented Norwegian artist Kier Cooke Sandvik. His beautiful drawings were featured in the summer 09 issue of our art zine Yuck 'n Yum.
Eagle-eyed viewers will recognise one of my Nine Trades prints at 0:40
Eagle-eyed viewers will recognise one of my Nine Trades prints at 0:40
Wednesday, 21 October 2009
grand tour
My prints were handed out around Cupar today by our band of soi-disant YYADAs, and you can find a full update here on the official Yuck 'n Yum @ Cupar blog.
Tuesday, 20 October 2009
nerves
Extract from Agota Kristof, Yesterday:
Today I start the idiotic routine again. I get up at five o'clock in the morning, I wash, I shave, I make some coffee, I set off, I run to the main square, I get on the bus, I close my eyes, and the full horror of my present life stares me in the face.
The bus stops three times. Once in the town and once in each village we pass through. In the fourth village is the factory in which I have worked for ten years.
A clockwork factory.
I lay my face in my hands as if I were sleeping, but I do it to hide my tears. I cry. I've had enough of the grey overall, I've had enough of clocking in, I've had enough of starting up my machine. I've had enough of work.
I put on the grey overall, I clock in, I go into the workshop.
The machines are running. Including mine. I only have to sit in front of it, take the parts, place them in the machine, press the pedal.
The clockwork factory is a huge building that dominates the valley. All the people who work there live in the same village except the odd few, like me, who come from town. There aren't many of us, the bus is almost empty.
The factory produces spare parts for other factories. Not one of us could assemble a whole watch.
I have to pierce a hole in a particular part, the same hole in the same part for the last ten years. That is the sum total of our work. Place a part in the machine, press on the pedal.
This work enables us to earn just enough to eat, to live somewhere and, above all, to be able to come to work the next day.
Whether it is dark or light outside, the neon lights are on all the time in the huge workshop. Soothing music is piped out of loudspeakers. The management think the staff work better with a bit of music.
There is this little chap, one of the workers, who sells sachets of white powder, tranquilisers which the village chemist makes up especially for us. I don't know what it is, I buy some occasionally. With this powder, the day passes more quickly, you feel a little less unhappy. The powder doesn't cost much, almost all the workers use it, the management turns a blind eye, and the village chemist makes a killing.
Sometimes there are outbursts; a woman gets up, shouts:
'I can't take any more!'
They take her away, work continues, they tell us:
'It's nothing, her nerves are shot.'
Today I start the idiotic routine again. I get up at five o'clock in the morning, I wash, I shave, I make some coffee, I set off, I run to the main square, I get on the bus, I close my eyes, and the full horror of my present life stares me in the face.
The bus stops three times. Once in the town and once in each village we pass through. In the fourth village is the factory in which I have worked for ten years.
A clockwork factory.
I lay my face in my hands as if I were sleeping, but I do it to hide my tears. I cry. I've had enough of the grey overall, I've had enough of clocking in, I've had enough of starting up my machine. I've had enough of work.
I put on the grey overall, I clock in, I go into the workshop.
The machines are running. Including mine. I only have to sit in front of it, take the parts, place them in the machine, press the pedal.
The clockwork factory is a huge building that dominates the valley. All the people who work there live in the same village except the odd few, like me, who come from town. There aren't many of us, the bus is almost empty.
The factory produces spare parts for other factories. Not one of us could assemble a whole watch.
I have to pierce a hole in a particular part, the same hole in the same part for the last ten years. That is the sum total of our work. Place a part in the machine, press on the pedal.
This work enables us to earn just enough to eat, to live somewhere and, above all, to be able to come to work the next day.
Whether it is dark or light outside, the neon lights are on all the time in the huge workshop. Soothing music is piped out of loudspeakers. The management think the staff work better with a bit of music.
There is this little chap, one of the workers, who sells sachets of white powder, tranquilisers which the village chemist makes up especially for us. I don't know what it is, I buy some occasionally. With this powder, the day passes more quickly, you feel a little less unhappy. The powder doesn't cost much, almost all the workers use it, the management turns a blind eye, and the village chemist makes a killing.
Sometimes there are outbursts; a woman gets up, shouts:
'I can't take any more!'
They take her away, work continues, they tell us:
'It's nothing, her nerves are shot.'
Monday, 19 October 2009
Sunday, 18 October 2009
fest
Richie Cumming reluctantly makes a unique soi-disant fashion statement
To Cupar yesterday for the Arts Festival, where Yuck 'n Yum are distributing artworks to the public. What with me still being half-crippled I held fort in the town centre shop, divvying out zines and information and selling the odd badge to festival-goers. The day's YYADA Richie Cumming has written a blog on the official Yuck 'n Yum @ Cupar site: LINK
Friday, 16 October 2009
dream
Extract from Daniel Lux, Camden Parasites:
By this year of 1980, smack usage permeated into the upper echelons including politicians' brats, even parts of the neo-aristocracy. Smack also spread up to the murky North, appearing on council estates. It didn't take long before I figured out Clarissa and the art school crowd were into gear, wanted it but found it difficult to obtain. They wanted smack as a status-enhancing symbol, something they could boast about at dinner parties in the year 2000. They didn't have a clue where to score as dealers wouldn't touch them. If these rich kids got nicked, they'd always squeal to the law, who'd get their address books into the bargain. Slinging them into a cell for an hour guaranteed to spill their guts. I decided to take a calculated chance, fill a market gap. So I finalised the business, collecting their dough, shooting off to the dealers, skim for personal use, overcharge, get fares for taxis, pocket the money, bunk fares on the tube. This represented a regular source of income. Although they guzzled champagne as a main tipple, smack soon took a hold. Clarissa participated, keeping it to a weekend basis. But for many of them these weekends became longer, Thursday to Monday, some at the stage where they wanted gear Wednesday after sweating it out all Tuesday. They'd beg me to score, waving cab fares and banknotes under my nose.
The art school provided another source of income for my enterprising spirit. They all needed materials like sable brushes, me writing down thickness to order. Also watercolours, cobalt grey flavour of the term. Art shops proliferate in the West End, with display cabinets usually unlocked. I even lifted an easel complete with stand, a helpful customer opening the door for me. I flogged the stuff to the would-be Rembrandts and Van Goghs. High-grade morons, they didn't know this to be all stolen, me spinning an implausible yarn about my father owning shares at Winsor and Newton. Believable, as most of their parents owned companies and sat on mountains of cash. These were by far the most idiotic bunch I'd come across, only their monied background cushioning them, protecting against the real world. If they weren't studying here, the boys would have been clicking heels at Sandhurst, girls doing photography or running non-economic dress shops. These people's parents owned mines in Southern Africa, a famous chocolate brand dating back to imperial days, were film directors, even the odd political connection surfaced. In other words, the stinking rich. I wanted some of this but it was all a narcotic-induced dream.
By this year of 1980, smack usage permeated into the upper echelons including politicians' brats, even parts of the neo-aristocracy. Smack also spread up to the murky North, appearing on council estates. It didn't take long before I figured out Clarissa and the art school crowd were into gear, wanted it but found it difficult to obtain. They wanted smack as a status-enhancing symbol, something they could boast about at dinner parties in the year 2000. They didn't have a clue where to score as dealers wouldn't touch them. If these rich kids got nicked, they'd always squeal to the law, who'd get their address books into the bargain. Slinging them into a cell for an hour guaranteed to spill their guts. I decided to take a calculated chance, fill a market gap. So I finalised the business, collecting their dough, shooting off to the dealers, skim for personal use, overcharge, get fares for taxis, pocket the money, bunk fares on the tube. This represented a regular source of income. Although they guzzled champagne as a main tipple, smack soon took a hold. Clarissa participated, keeping it to a weekend basis. But for many of them these weekends became longer, Thursday to Monday, some at the stage where they wanted gear Wednesday after sweating it out all Tuesday. They'd beg me to score, waving cab fares and banknotes under my nose.
The art school provided another source of income for my enterprising spirit. They all needed materials like sable brushes, me writing down thickness to order. Also watercolours, cobalt grey flavour of the term. Art shops proliferate in the West End, with display cabinets usually unlocked. I even lifted an easel complete with stand, a helpful customer opening the door for me. I flogged the stuff to the would-be Rembrandts and Van Goghs. High-grade morons, they didn't know this to be all stolen, me spinning an implausible yarn about my father owning shares at Winsor and Newton. Believable, as most of their parents owned companies and sat on mountains of cash. These were by far the most idiotic bunch I'd come across, only their monied background cushioning them, protecting against the real world. If they weren't studying here, the boys would have been clicking heels at Sandhurst, girls doing photography or running non-economic dress shops. These people's parents owned mines in Southern Africa, a famous chocolate brand dating back to imperial days, were film directors, even the odd political connection surfaced. In other words, the stinking rich. I wanted some of this but it was all a narcotic-induced dream.
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Indiceses
Recently reunited with my laptop, and seeing as how there's been no posts for a few days I do hereby introduce a bumper crop of links from my Delicious page:
Ever Dream This Man?
Frieze Magazine | Archive | Some Deaths Take Forever
It’s Burning Everywhere: Thomas Hirschhorn @ DCA | The Skinny
YNY at Cupar09
Sue de Beer
k-punk: "An abyss that laughs at creation"
Hip Leeds
A Journey Round My Skull: Unica Zurn, Oracle and Spectacle
k-punk: How the Other Half Doesn't Live
Jon Savage on Song: The Children sing for freedom | Jon Savage | Music ...
Hey Zinesters! How fanzines empowered a generation | Music | guardian.co.uk
DARIO ARGENTO - - Vice Magazine
Sunday, 11 October 2009
Saturday, 10 October 2009
Y'nY @ Cupar09
Scotland's premier art zine Yuck 'n Yum is participating in this year's Cupar Arts Festival. There is now a lovely website to help keep you updated with news of all the artists, YYADAs, blogs, pictures and writings. Nice one!
Friday, 9 October 2009
outcast
Extract from Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet:
The child senses that a woman tore him from herself, alive, covered with blood, and sent him rolling outside the world, and he feels himself an outcast. Ever since his birth he has been the unloved one, the inopportune, the superfluous. Undesirable in his very being, he is not that woman's son but her excrement. And we shall see how insistently, with what masochistic pleasure, Genet will later compare himself to filth, to a waste product. Psychoanalysts have observed that children often feel a parent's death to be a condemnation; the mother goes away so as no longer to see her unnatural son. The abandoning of a child signifies an even more radical condemnation! Is it a mysterious sentence that is punishing him for having committed the crime of being born? Is it a prophetic verdict that is making him pay in advance for future crimes? In any case, the judge is unknown, the child is ignorant of the charges and of the law, but the condemnation attacks his existence itself and eats away at it. Beneath the supposed innocence that adults have conferred upon him is hidden a sense of elusive guilt. Being nobody's son, he is nothing. As a result of his fault, disorder has wormed its way into the beautiful order of the world, a crack has appeared in the fullness of being.
The child senses that a woman tore him from herself, alive, covered with blood, and sent him rolling outside the world, and he feels himself an outcast. Ever since his birth he has been the unloved one, the inopportune, the superfluous. Undesirable in his very being, he is not that woman's son but her excrement. And we shall see how insistently, with what masochistic pleasure, Genet will later compare himself to filth, to a waste product. Psychoanalysts have observed that children often feel a parent's death to be a condemnation; the mother goes away so as no longer to see her unnatural son. The abandoning of a child signifies an even more radical condemnation! Is it a mysterious sentence that is punishing him for having committed the crime of being born? Is it a prophetic verdict that is making him pay in advance for future crimes? In any case, the judge is unknown, the child is ignorant of the charges and of the law, but the condemnation attacks his existence itself and eats away at it. Beneath the supposed innocence that adults have conferred upon him is hidden a sense of elusive guilt. Being nobody's son, he is nothing. As a result of his fault, disorder has wormed its way into the beautiful order of the world, a crack has appeared in the fullness of being.
Thursday, 8 October 2009
Wednesday, 7 October 2009
Automatic Drawing Project (Service Class) - install
So the prints have now been framed and installed in the third-floor meeting room of the bank. There has been a great response to them and there will hopefully soon be a grand opening reception complete with drinks and snacks and the like. For now I have taken a few photos, sadly not all of which have come out too well due to the reflections in the glass. Hopefully there should still be enough of sufficient quality to give you a sort-of-idea:
Ashish Sharma - Untitled
Ben Robinson - The Intense Organism
Paul Harris - Untitled
Steven Thomson - Helping Hand
Carol McGovern and Lisa Robertson - Untitled
Cheryl McGuinness - Untitled
Adam Redpath - The Happy Carrot
Carol McGovern - Hello
Ashish Sharma - Untitled
Ben Robinson - The Intense Organism
Paul Harris - Untitled
Steven Thomson - Helping Hand
Carol McGovern and Lisa Robertson - Untitled
Cheryl McGuinness - Untitled
Adam Redpath - The Happy Carrot
Carol McGovern - Hello
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
preview
From the Nine Trades blog:
All being well, today ought to see the completed Automatic Drawing Project (Service Class) installed on the walls of the bank's third-floor meeting room. Last week we sorted out which prints will make the final cut. Later on they will hopefully be framed and resplendent in the workplace.
All being well, today ought to see the completed Automatic Drawing Project (Service Class) installed on the walls of the bank's third-floor meeting room. Last week we sorted out which prints will make the final cut. Later on they will hopefully be framed and resplendent in the workplace.
Sunday, 4 October 2009
set
Yet more launch-related info, this is a list of records that were played by myself during Friday's festivities:
Nightmoves – Transdance (UK club mix) (Copilote)
Nacho Patrol – Africaspaceprogram (Kindred Spirits)
Grackle – Desert Acid (Musiccargo version) (Supersoul Recordings)
Hypnotic Samba - Hypnotic Samba (ZYX)
Sharpe & Numan - Change Your Mind (Polydor)
Ganymed - It Takes Me Higher (Creole)
Connie Case - Get Down (Strut)
Alexander Robotnick - Made In China (IBM edit) (Crème Organization)
Nightmoves – Transdance (UK club mix) (Copilote)
Nacho Patrol – Africaspaceprogram (Kindred Spirits)
Grackle – Desert Acid (Musiccargo version) (Supersoul Recordings)
Hypnotic Samba - Hypnotic Samba (ZYX)
Sharpe & Numan - Change Your Mind (Polydor)
Ganymed - It Takes Me Higher (Creole)
Connie Case - Get Down (Strut)
Alexander Robotnick - Made In China (IBM edit) (Crème Organization)
Edward Shallow live @ Yuck 'n Yum
...seeing as how I'm burying this blog under an avalanche of Yuck 'n Yum-related spam, here is a video clip of the mighty Edward Shallow. It's an extract from his live Nintendo Gameboy sound performance on Friday night.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
autumn 09 launched
So last night's launch of the Yuck 'n Yum autumn 09 issue turned out to be a capital success, and we're all feeling ever so pleased with ourselves. Lots of punters in attendance for some red-hot DJ action from stella999 and the FlexiDJs plus a virtuoso live Gameboy performance from the mighty Edward Shallow. I took plenty of photos and here are a few of them:
